The situation in France appeared to be escalating Monday as viral video showed a burning school with staff, students, and journalists barricaded inside. 

The scene, ripped right from the medieval crusades or the Jacobins’ 18th-century Reign of Terror, occurred at Nicolas Louis Vauquelin vocational high school, located in the 13th Arrondissement in southeast Paris. 

The spot is roughly three miles from tourist-heavy spots like the Notre Dame Cathedral, which itself was reopened in December 2024 after six years of restoration following a devastating fire, reportedly caused by an electrical short-circuit or discarded cigarette. 

It was not immediately apparent whether the arson attack on the school resulted in any injuries. 

According to the translation of a report from BFM, about 100 students were forced to seek shelter in another part of the school as the fire blocked the entrance.

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School principal Carole Zerbib said the incident happened around the start of the school day on Monday, as “a group of a dozen young hooded, masked and all dressed in black” showed up.

“They looked very determined, very fast, and we immediately realized that we were not going to be able to argue with them,” Zerbib said. 

The terrorists barricaded the door using bicycles and a sofa that had been sitting on a nearby curb. 

“There, they threw full trash cans outside the door of the facility and brought in many other things that were flammable,” Zerbib said.

They also smashed the windows of the school using a pair of crutches. 

“It was very quick, very violent. You can tell that this team was very organized and had planned their attack,” Zerbib said.

As firemen attempted to respond, the masked instigators shot mortar-style fireworks at them.

But less than an hour after the initial fire was contained, the perpetrators returned and set two more fires, forcing a lockdown of the school. 

Zerbib said the school had been on alert since the riots, ostensibly stemming from student protests over education funding, began laying waste last week to cities throughout France. 

“We had been conducting a dialogue with the students for several days, during which we listened to their demands,” she said. 

Nonetheless, she received word over the weekend that a fatwa had gone out over social media for the school to come under attack. 

“I was alerted by students and teachers about things circulating on social media, a call to burn down the establishment,” Zerbib said.

Shocking images have shown vandalism escalating to violence in cities including Marseilles, Bordeaux and Rouen. 

In a particularly alarming episode, a masked 15-year-old used an aerosol spray can and lighter to set fire to the face of a woman waiting at a bus stop in Marseilles.

The alleged perpetrator has been arrested and charged with “an act of barbarity,” Le Monde reported.

Another alarming incident showed a crowd of rioters and onlookers appearing to laugh and film as a fireman attempting to put out a small street fire was engulfed in flames.

Still others showed rioters assaulting police officers and setting fire to vehicles, including public buses and fire engines.

On Tuesday, police dispersed a large gathering at the Place de la Nation monument, not far from the Place de la Bastille landmark and the popular Père Lachaise cemetery. 

Officials said that the demonstrations initially began as student protests but have escalated with support from the far-left La France Insoumise party. Some labor unions were also reported to be backing the unrest. 

An estimated 450,000 rioters were participating nationwide, with the Justice Ministry reporting just over 5,000 arrests as of Tuesday.

Despite the devastation, the leftist French government, led by President Emanuel Macron, appeared to be largely frozen in inaction. 

French authorities pushed back against U.S. President Donald Trump for saying the riots were linked to Islamic extremism driven largely by Middle Eastern and North African migrants. 

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leading candidate with La France Insoumise, claimed this was far-right propaganda being propagated by political rival Marine Le Pen. 

“Trump must be warned that Ms. Le Pen is giving him a fantasized account of the causes of the violence in France,” he claimed. “As we verified today in Paris and in several cities in France, it is a police force that no one commands anymore that provokes, assaults, injures, and maims the young demonstrators and the unionists who came to protect them.”

Le Pen, a longtime conservative figure who has, like Trump, been the target of lawfare and ostracization by the French government, has been outspoken in her criticism since the riots began.

“We must pass a new anti-rioters law so that participation in a riot is a clearly identified offense,” she said in a recent post.

A Polymarket tracker showed Le Pen, known for her support of closed borders and tight immigration laws, surging in the odds for France’s next presidential election, which will be held in April 2027.

Similarly, pushback against open-border policies has led anti-immigration movements to surge elsewhere, including Germany, where the conservative AfD party recently won multiple landslide elections to the country’s legislative body, the Bundestag.